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Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones

Estéticas

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Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas

México

C. Wilson, Christhoper

Saint Teresa of Ávilas Martyrdom: Images of Her Transverberation in Mexican Colonial Painting

Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, vol. XXI, núm. 75, primavera, 1999, pp. 211-233

Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas

Distrito Federal, México

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211ANALES DEL INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES ESTÉTICAS, NÚMS. 74-75, 1999

Christopher C. Wilson

the george washington university

Saint Teresa of Ávila’s Martyrdom:Images of Her Transverberation in

Mexican Colonial Painting

IN HER AUTOBIOGRAPHY, known as the Book of Her Life, the extraordinarySpanish nun St. Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) describes her most re-nownedmystical experience, the Transverberation, or piercing of the heart. Of

this ecstatic vision, which occurred around the year 1560, she writes:

I saw close to me toward my left side an angel in bodily form […] in his hands[was] a large golden dart and at the end of the iron tip there appeared to be a lit-tle fire. It seemed to me this angel plunged the dart several times into my heartand that it reached deep within me. When he drew it out, I thought he was car-rying off with him the deepest part of me; and he left me all on fire with greatlove of God. The pain was so great that it made me moan, and the sweetnessthis greatest pain caused me was so superabundant that there is no desire capableof taking it away.1

Within a few decades of Teresa’s death this episode became known to audi-

1. Teresa of Ávila, The Book of Her Life, 29.13. Unless otherwise noted, all English quota-tions of Teresa’s writings are taken from the three volume Collected Works of St. Teresa ofÁvila, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez, Washington, D. C., Institute ofCarmelite Studies, 1976-1985. I use chapter and paragraph citations to facilitate reference toother editions. The term “Transverberation” is derived from the Latin transverberare, “tothrust through, pierce through, transfix, perforate.”

ences throughout Catholic Europe, as the saint’s books were disseminated innumerous best-selling editions, and as painters, sculptors, and engravers tookup the theme of the piercing of her heart. Teresa’s vision was also officiallyhighlighted by the Church on the day of her canonization in 1622, when abanner depicting the Transverberation adorned the interior of St. Peter’sBasilica in Rome.2 This subject captured the attention of Baroque artistssuch as Peter Paul Rubens, who around the year 1614 painted a Transverbera-tion for the church of the Discalced Carmelites in Brussels, and GianlorenzoBernini, whose magnificent mid-seventeenth-century sculpture in theCornaro Chapel of Rome’s Santa Maria della Vittoria is the most famousrendition of Teresa’s Transverberation in the history of art.3

Like their counterparts in Europe, many of the greatest painters of NewSpain also took up their brushes to paint representations of the Transverber-ation. Teresa’s image was a favorite one in the viceroyalty, featured in thedecoration of many churches, convents, and monasteries, especially thoseassociated with the reformed Order she had founded, the Discalced Carme-lites. Beyond the Virgin Mary, few other female subjects were so oftendepicted in Latin American art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesas Teresa of Ávila, and the Transverberation was among the most popular

212 christhoper c. wilson

2. An engraving by Matthäus Greuter, issued at Rome in 1622, shows a view into the interior ofSt. Peter’s on the day (March 12) of that year when Teresa, Francis Xavier, Isidore of Seville,Ignatius of Loyola, and Philip Neri were canonized. Banners depicting each of the figures canbe seen hanging in the crossing. Teresa’s banner bears a depiction of the Transverberation.

3. Rubens’ painting remained at the Discalced Carmelite Church in Brussels until the eigh-teenth century. It then passed into private collections, and was destroyed by fire in England in1940. See Hans Vlieghe, Saints (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, VIII), 2 vols., London,Phaidon, 1972-73, II, pp. 159-161. The most comprehensive study of Bernini’s Transverberation iscontained in Irving Lavin, Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts, 2 vols., New York and Lon-don, Oxford University Press, 1980, I, pp. 127-34. Lavin (113-18) asserts that Teresa’s recliningposition in the sculpted altarpiece reflects a contemporary trend that identified her Transverber-ation with her ecstatic love-death, a point relevant to colonial depictions of the subject, asshown in this paper.

4. For studies of Teresa’s image in art of New Spain, see Christopher C. Wilson, Mother, Mis-sionary, Martyr: St. Teresa of Ávila in Mexican Colonial Art, Ph. D. diss. (The George WashingtonUniversity), Ann Arbor, UMI, 1998; Elisa Vargaslugo and José Guadalupe Victoria, “TheresiaMagna,” in Elisa Vargaslugo et al., Juan Correa: su vida y su obra, 4 vols., México, UniversidadNacional Autónoma de México, 1985-1994, IV, pp. 417-452; Héctor H. Schenone, Iconografía delarte colonial, 2 vols., Argentina, Fundación Tarea, 1992, II, pp. 731-747; and Santiago Sebastián, ElBarroco iberoamericano: mensaje iconográfico, Madrid, Encuentro, 1990, pp. 291-293.

Teresian themes treated by Mexican painters.4

This paper proposes that in New Spain the iconography of Teresa’s Trans-verberation communicated not only mystical experience, but also martyr-dom. Such an idea is made explicit in a late-seventeenth-century canvas byJuan Correa, sent at some point from Mexico to the Spanish Church of San-to Tomás in Teresa’s hometown of Ávila.5 Based on a seventeenth-centuryFlemish engraving by Richard Collin (1626-1687), the emblematic workplaces Teresa within a landscape, in the left background of which is aprecipice labeled “Mons Carmeli” (Mount Carmel), the supposed birthplace

saint teresa of ávil a s martyrdom 213

Figure 1. Luis Juárez, St. Teresa and Her Brother Rodrigo on Their Way to the Land ofthe Moors, first half 17th century. Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones, Churubusco.Photo: Ricardo Martínez, Archivo Fotográfico IIE-UNAM.

5. For an analysis of Correa’s painting now in Ávila, see , Vargaslugo et al., II, part 2, pp. 359-360.

of the Carmelite Order in the Holy Land. While she holds her attributes asauthor, a pen and open manuscript, an angel guides an arrow into her breast.

Surrounding the image of Transverberation in Correa’s painting are smallangels with Latin-inscribed shields that identify Teresa as virgin, doctor,patriarch, and most interestingly, martyr: “Having once looked for martyr-dom in Africa, and thenceforth always desiring it, and finally havingattained it when she expired at the impetus of the tyrant, divine love.”6

Twentieth-century medical assessments have suggested that Teresa died ofcancer of the uterus, but as the inscription suggests, in the Baroque period adifferent view enjoyed widespread circulation.7 According to this way ofthinking, Teresa’s demise, while not brought about by the same earthlyarrows that killed the early Christian virgin-martyr St. Ursula, resulted fromwounds inflicted by the arrows of divine love, a martyrdom visualized in artby the image of the Transverberation.

How did Teresa come to be viewed as a martyr? The saint’s writings,replete with expressions of desire for martyrdom, were largely responsible forthis perception. In her Life Teresa relates that as a child, she and her brotherRodrigo became so inspired by reading stories of martyrs that they attempt-ed to run away to “the land of the Moors” (presumably northern Africa),where they hoped to be decapitated.8 This episode was retold in subsequentTeresian hagiographies, and, like her childhood pastime of pretending to bea nun, was viewed as a foreshadowing of her future saintly endeavors.According to such typology, Teresa’s youthful attempt at self-sacrifice,though unsuccessful, marked her as one destined to receive the martyr’spalm and crown. The event became the moment of Teresa’s childhood mostoften represented in art, including that of colonial Mexico. During the firsthalf of the seventeenth century, Luis Juárez treated the subject in a painting nowat the Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones in Churubusco (figure 1), taking hisinspiration from a 1613 Flemish engraving, one in a series of twenty-five scenes of


6. “Martyrio, semel ab Africa quaesito, semper deinde desiderato, tandemque supplentetyrannum divino Amore (cuius impetu expiravit) consummato.”

7. Modern physicians have made the diagnosis of uterine cancer by studying the existingdescriptions of Teresa’s last illness, which mention the saint’s severe hemorrhaging. See theintroduction by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez to the Collected Works of St. Teresaof Ávila, III, p. 76.

8. Life, 1.4.9. An analysis of the painting is included in Rogelio Ruiz Gomar, El pintor Luis Juárez: su

Teresa’s life by Adriaen Collaert and Cornelis Galle (figure 2).9 The two childrenare shown leaving Ávila with walking sticks, Teresa wearing a traveler’s hatsurrounded by a halo. She gestures toward the road ahead, explaining herintentions to her uncle, who has just arrived on horseback to intercept thechildren. For audiences of New Spain, the image of Teresa and Rodrigo aswould-be martyrs associated them with children who laid down their lives indefense of the faith. Prominent Mexican paintings of child martyrs include amid-seventeenth-century work by José Juárez, depicting the early Christianmartyrs St. Justus and St. Pastor (Mexico City, Pinacoteca Virreinal), inwhich the two brothers, of seven and nine years old, hold palm fronds andreceive floral wreaths from angels as scenes of their martyrdom are enactedin the background. There were also pictorial testimonies of the sixteenth-century martyrs known as the children of Tlaxcala, Native American young-sters who converted to Christianity and, on that account, were slaughteredby their parents.10

As the inscribed shield in Correa’s painting affirms, once Teresa soughtmartyrdom in Africa, she thenceforth always desired it. But if her young agehad impeded her early attempt at martyrdom, her gender soon proved to bean even greater obstacle. Jodi Bilinkoff has pointed out that Teresa aspiredtoward an essentially male model of sanctity: she longed to preach, to con-vert souls, even to die in defense of the faith.11 Envious of priests who oper-ated free of misogynist constraints, she experienced deep frustration, alongwith some resentment, that her status as a woman in the sixteenth centurySpain made these apostolic activities unavailable to her. Her books revealthat instead of giving up on such seemingly impossible aims, however, shedesigned a means for achieving them through her life as a DiscalcedCarmelite nun and foundress of convents. In the Way of Perfection, addressedto the nuns of her Carmelite reform, Teresa informs her readers that theycan be both missionaries and martyrs, though they are women. She insiststhat prayer is a powerful weapon by which they can bolster the Church’s


vida y su obra, México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1987, pp. 204-207.10. For a discussion of the iconography of martyrdom, including that of American martyrs

such as the children of Tlaxcala, see Elisa Vargaslugo, “Martirio, agonía, resurrección,” in Artey mística del barroco, México, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994, pp. 327-331.

11. Jodi Bilinkoff, “Woman with a Mission: Teresa of Ávila and the Apostolic Model,” inModelli di santità e modelli di comportamento, Torino, Rosenberg and Seller, 1994, pp. 295-305.

efforts to combat heresy and save souls. By remaining occupied in prayer forpriests and defenders of the faith —those on the front lines of the Church’smilitant offensive— “we shall be fighting for Him [God] even though we arevery cloistered.”12 And though they might not die at the hands of infidels,Teresa assures her nuns that the austerities practiced in each of her houses—poverty, silence, enclosure, penance— can lead to an interior death whichis nothing less than “a long martyrdom.”13 Trials and illnesses should be wel-comed, since they serve as catalysts in this process of dying. Teresa sums upthe attitude to be adopted by the Discalced Carmelite nun: “Be determined,Sisters, that you came to die for Christ, not to live comfortably forChrist.”14

According to the saint’s early biographers and those who knew her, Tere-


Figure 2. Adriaen Collaert, St. Teresa and Her Brother Rodrigo on Their Way to theLand of the Moors, 1613.

12. Way of Perfection, 3.5.13. Way, 12.2.14. Way, 10.5.

sa’s lifelong quest for martyrdom reached its climactic conclusion in the suf-ferings of her final days. These authors’ texts constructed for Teresa the mar-tyrdom that she had always sought. Ana de San Bartolomé, Teresa’s nurse,secretary, and traveling companion, characterizes the saint’s excruciating finaljourney from Burgos to Alba de Tormes, the city where she died in 1582, as“a prolonged martyrdom.”15 Francisco de Ribera, author of the first pub-lished biography of the saint (1590), suggests that her last days were reminis-cent of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.16 And Diego de Yepes, in a biographypublished nine years later (1599), asserts, “Though she was not a martyr inblade and blood, she was one in spirit, and her travails earned her the crown


15. Ana de San Bartolomé, Obras completas de la Beata Ana de San Bartolomé, 2 vols., ed.Julián Urkiza, Roma, Teresianum, 1981, I, p. 26.

16. The most recent edition of Francisco de Ribera’s biograpy of Teresa (Salamanca, 1590) isJaime Pons, ed., Vida de Santa Teresa de Jesús por el P. Francisco de Ribera, Barcelona, 1908, p. 333.

17. Diego de Yepes, Vida, virtudes y milagros de la Bienventurada Virgen Teresa de Jesús(Madrid, 1599). Quoted in translation in Carlos M. N. Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory: TheArt and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 403.

Figure 3. Anton Wierix, Transverbera-tion of St. Teresa, early 17th century.

that others earned through the sword.”17

This way of thinking was further strengthened by accounts of a curiousevent reported to have occurred at the moment of Teresa’s death. One of thenuns at Alba de Tormes reported seeing a multitude of heavenly figures, eachdressed in resplendent white, proceed through the convent as the saint passedaway in her cell.18 The phenomenon was reported during the proceedings con-ducted for Teresa’s beatification and canonization, and was highlighted in bothYepes’ and Ribera’s biographies. Members of the Order interpreted the figures asthe Ten Thousand Martyrs, a throng of second-century Christians who, accord-ing to legend, were crucified on Mount Ararat. Teresa was devoted to these mar-tyrs during her life (she included them in a handwritten list of favorite saintsthat was kept in her breviary), and, as reported during the canonization pro-ceedings, she once had a vision in which they promised to accompany her toheaven at the hour of her death.19 The assertion that they appeared at Alba deTormes to retrieve the dying Teresa, accepting her into their number, fueled thenotion that the saint’s true identity as a martyr was revealed at her death.

In art, the idea of Teresa’s martyrdom became inextricably linked withher experience of the Transverberation. Such an association was fostered, inlarge part, by the saint’s own comparison of ecstasy with death. In the midstof certain mystical experiences, she declares, the force of God’s love almostsundered her soul from her body, bringing her to the brink of demise. Shecalls the experience of union with God during prayer “a delectable death”(una muerte sabrosa), and advises her Discalced Carmelite nuns, “Do notthink, my daughters, that it is an exaggeration when I speak of dying [in


18. Efrén de la Madre de Dios and Otger Steggink, Tiempo y vida de Santa Teresa, Madrid,Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1979, p. 988. The nun who witnessed this vision was Catali-na de San Ángelo.

19. Madre de Dios and Steggink, p. 988, n. 201. For the list of Teresa’s favorite saints, con-tained within her breviary, see Santa Teresa de Jesús: Obras completas, ed. Efren de la Madrede Dios and Otger Steggink, Madrid, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1986, p. 1426. Devo-tion to the Ten Thousand Martyrs was strong on the Iberian Peninsula during this period.Their relics were venerated in Spain at Ávila and Cuenca, and in the Portuguese cities of Lis-bon and Coimbra. At least one version of their legend endows the Ten Thousand with spe-cial relevance for Spaniards, claiming that prior to death they were baptized on Mount Araratby Saint Hermolaus, Bishop of Toledo. See S. Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, vol. VI,Edinburgh, 1914, pp. 299-304.

20. Interior Castle, V, 1.4, and Meditations on the Song of Songs, 7.2, quoted in translation inEire, pp. 397-398.

ecstasy], because —as I have already told you— it really does happen.”20

Describing the effects of being wounded with love for God, as during themoment of her Transverberation, she writes, “You can’t exaggerate ordescribe the way in which God wounds the soul and the extreme pain thiswound produces, for it causes the soul to forget itself. Yet this pain is sodelightful that there is no other pleasure in life that gives greater happiness.The soul would always want, as I said, to be dying of this sickness.”21

In view of these statements, it is not surprising that the saint’s nuns andearly biographers characterized her physical death in 1582 as the result of afatal ecstasy, so forceful that it thrust her soul out of her body. Though thephysicians attending her attributed Teresa’s demise to loss of blood, Diego deYepes had a different diagnosis: “It would certainly be impossible to denythat these ailments greatly contributed towards severing the thread of herlife, but the knife that finally killed her was the great force of God’s mightyand powerful love, which wrested not only her spirit from her soul, but alsoher soul from her body.”22 Teresa’s companions concurred with this diagno-sis, affirming that the peaceful expression on her face when she died was thesame she often had while in ecstasy.

In his classic study of Bernini’s decoration of the Cornaro Chapel, IrvingLavin cites a hymn by Pope Urban VIII (reigned 1623-1644), contained withinthe divine office for Teresa’s feast day (15 October), that underlines the per-ceived connection between Teresa’s ecstatic love-death and her experience of


21. Life, 29.10. Emphasis added.22. Quoted in translation in Eire, p. 411. The idea of dying from the force of divine love can

also be found in the writings of Saint John of the Cross, Teresa’s close friend, confessor, andco-reformer: “It should be known that the death of persons who have reached this state is fardifferent in its cause and mode than the death of others, even though it is similar in naturalcircumstances. If the death of other people is caused by sickness or old age, the death of thesepersons is not so induced, in spite of their being sick or old; their soul is not wrested fromthem unless by some impetus and encounter of love, far more sublime than previous ones, ofgreater power, and more valiant, since it tears through the veil and carries off the jewel, whichis the soul” (Living Flame of Love, second redaction, stanza 1, paragraph 30, trans. KieranKavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Washington,D. C., Institute for Carmelite Studies, 1979, pp. 591-592).

23. The office of St. Teresa was first decreed by the Sacred Congregation of Rites in 1629

for the Discalced Carmelite Order. After having been extended optionally to the UniversalChurch in 1636, it was made obligatory in 1644 and remains so today. Urban VIII composedtwo hymns, one to be sung at matins (the one cited here), the other at first vespers. See Lavin,I, pp. 116-117.

the Transverberation.23 The first stanza alludes to her childhood attempt atmartyrdom; the next two stanzas suggest that the Transverberation was theactual wound by which she was eventually martyred:

Messenger of the heavenly King,Your father’s home you desert,

to bring to barbarous lands, Teresa,Either Christ or your blood.

But a sweeter death awaits you,A milder penance calls.

With the dart of divine loveThrust into your wounds you will fall.

O victim of love!Inflame our hearts

And free from the fire of hellThose entrusted to your care.24

Urban VIII’s characterization of Teresa as a “victim of love,” wounded by divinelove’s darts, has a visual counterpart in some early seventeenth-century engrav-ings, produced in the Spanish Netherlands. These were among the first works ofart to present the Transverberation as an evocation of saintly death. Lavin hasshown that such images influenced Bernini’s work at the Cornaro chapel; surviv-ing Mexican paintings reveal that they were circulated among artists in theAmericas as well. A print by Anton Wierix (figure 3) shows Teresa kneeling on aflower-strewed floor that juts out toward the viewer, like a stage. She spreads herarms in surrender as an angel plunges a fiery arrow into her heart. God theFather surveys the scene from above, as angels shower blossoms upon thewounded saint. At the bottom of the print is an inscription from the Song ofSongs that interprets the scene as a fatal ecstasy: “Sustain me with flowers andsurround me with apples, for I am dying of love.” (Sg. 2:5)25 This engraving was


24. Quoted in Latin and in translation in Lavin, I, pp. 116-117. 25. In her Meditations on the Song of Songs, Teresa devotes an entire chapter (7) to this

Scriptural passage.


Figure 4. Anton Wierix, Transverberation of St. Teresa with the Holy Family, early 17th century.

Figure 5. Alonso López Herrera, Transverberation of St. Teresa, first half 17th century, PrivateColletion, México City. Photo: Archivo Fotográfico IIE-UNAM.

carried to the Spanish colonies, where it formed the basis for a seventeenth-cen-tury Transverberation, by an unidentified Mexican painter, now in the MuseoNacional del Virreinato in Tepotzotlán.26 The artist simplified the compositionto show only Teresa and the large angel with the arrow, but on the floor sur-rounding the saint are the flowers seen in the print.

Another Wierix print shows the Transverberation being carried out notby an angel, but by the Christ Child, holding a bow and arrow (figure 4).This iconography epitomizes a Counter-Reformation tendency to identifythe Christ Child with Cupid and the allegorical figure of Divine Love, bothof whom were represented using arrows to inflame their subjects with love.27

Accompanied by the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph, the Child draws back Hisbow, preparing to launch an arrow at the collapsed figure of Teresa, who fallsbackward as if in the final moments of dying, with one arrow already stuckin her breast. An angel rushes down to present Teresa with a palm frond, anattribute of martyrdom. Another angel flies down to crown Teresa’s headwith a flower wreath, a symbol of the heavenly reward she has merited. Atthe bottom of the print is an inscription that places the image of Transver-beration in a liminal space between life and death. It says that Teresa, “onthe point of death,” asks of Mary and Joseph: “Why, parents, do you giveweapons? Why do you incite the Archer of Life against a loving person?”28

This print provided the basis for a Mexican rendition of the Transverbera-tion with the Holy Family, probably of the eighteenth century, in Puebla’sChurch of Carmen.


26. This same Wierix print also underlies a painting of the subject by Luis Berrueco, in aprivate collection in Mexico City. See Manuel Toussaint, Pintura colonial en México, México,Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1990, fig. 341.

27. This theme is considered by Joseph F. Chorpenning in his introduction to Just Man,Husband of Mary, Guardian of Christ: An Anthology of Readings from Jerónimo Gracián’s Sum-mary of the Excellencies of St. Joseph (1597), Philadelphia, St. Joseph’s University Press, 1993,pp. 35-39.

28. “Quid parentes tela datis/ In amantem incitatis/ Vitae Sagittarium?/ Quaerit ab hocnecis fortem/ Imo putat esse mortem/ Dum negat interitum.” The first three lines are in theform of a question which Teresa asks of Joseph and Mary: “Why, parents, do you giveweapons? Why do you incite the Archer of Life against a loving person?” The next three linesexplain to the viewer, “She asks from this point of death, but on the contrary she considers itto be a heroic death, while denying that it is her annihilation”. These lines reflect Teresa’sown assertions that during ecstasy she came close to death and eagerly yearned for it, but,until 1582 at least, disappointedly found that her soul and body would have to reunite.

As the preceding examples suggest, it was through the medium of Flem-ish prints, the inscriptions of which often linked the piercing of Teresa’sheart to death, that the iconography of the Transverberation traveled to theColonial Americas. When considering this image in Mexican art, it is impor-tant to note that, beginning in the early seventeenth century, a piece of thesaint’s heart was in the possession of the Discalced Carmelite nuns in the cityof Puebla.29 The presence of this relic must have fueled local devotion toTeresa’s best-known mystical experience, since, during the period under con-sideration, it was commonplace to associate her Transverberation with theactual organ that was removed from her incorrupt body.

The earliest surviving Mexican image of the piercing of Teresa’s heart is awork painted in the first half of the seventeenth century by Alonso López deHerrera (figure 5).30 His Transverberation contains the basic elements thatwill be seen in most subsequent Mexican renditions of the episode: oneangel supports Teresa from behind as another aims the point of an arrow atthe saint’s heart. Transported out of herself during the ecstatic moment,Teresa looks toward heaven, where the Holy Spirit hovers, and spreads herarms in surrender to the sweet yet painful wounding. The compositionderives from a print contained in Collaert and Galle’s 1613 series of Teresa’slife (figure 6), though the Mexican painter has eliminated the architecturalbackground of the engraving and zooms in on the figures of Teresa and thetwo angels.

For New Hispanic viewers, a composition such as López de Herrera’swould have summoned up associations with images of martyrs that hung onthe walls of local churches, thus strengthening the identification of Teresa’sTransverberation as a martyrdom. In the colonial Americas, as in Counter-Reformation Europe, visual representations of martyrdom ascended to spe-cial prominence, communicating the virtue of defending the faith even atthe cost of one’s life.31 Such a message had particular resonance during the


29. Simon of Sts. Joseph and Teresa, Wonders of the Heart of St. Teresa of Jesus, Baltimore,1882, p. 41. The relic of Teresa’s heart remains today in the possession of the DiscalcedCarmelite nuns of Puebla.

30. Toussaint, p. 79.31. The classic analysis of the theme of martyrdom in Counter-Reformation art is Émile

Mâle, L’art religieux de la fin du XVIe siècle, du XVIIe siècle et du XVIIIe siècle: Étude sur l’iconogra-phie après le Concile de Trente, Paris, Librarie Armand Colin, 1951, pp. 109-149. For a summa-ry of the theme in colonial art of Latin America, see Sebastián, pp. 218-220.

colonial period, when certain contemporary deaths were perceived as cases ofmartyrdom. In addition to the martyred children of Tlaxcala mentioned pre-viously, there was a cult surrounding the Franciscan missionary St. Philip ofJesus, a native of Mexico City, who in 1570 was crucified in Japan with twen-ty six other friars, deacons, lay people, and Japanese tertiaries. This event wasdepicted in New Hispanic art, including a series of murals in the Franciscanchurch at Cuernavaca. The Jesuit Order also claimed to have contributedmartyrs to the Church’s missionary effort. Between 1594 and 1734, thirteenmembers of the Order were killed while propagating the faith at missions inNorthern Mexico.32

Arrows figure in the iconography of two early Christian martyrs, St.


Figure 6. Adriaen Collaert and Cornelis Galle, Transverberation of St. Teresa, 1613.

32. For accounts of sixteenth and seventeenth-century martyrdoms in New Spain and Asia,see Vargaslugo, “Martirio, agonía, resurrección,” pp. 328-330, and Gustavo Curiel Méndez,“San Felipe de Jesús: figura y mito (1629-1862),” in Historia, leyendas y mitos de México: suexpresión en el arte, México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investi-gaciones Estéticas, 1988, pp. 71-92.


Figure 7. Attributed to Baltasar de Echave Orio, St. Sebastian,16th century, formerly Cathedral of México, until destroyed byfire in 1969. Photo: Archivo Fotográfico IIE-UNAM.

Sebastian and St. Ursula, both of whom were frequently portrayed by colo-nial artists. According to legend Sebastian (ca. 300), a captain of the praeto-rian guards in Rome, was shot through with arrows when the Emperor Dio-cletian discovered his Christianity.33 In Mexican art, as in that of Europe, heis shown bound to a tree or stake, his body transfixed with arrows. Suchiconography could be contemplated by worshippers at Mexico City’s cathe-dral, where there was displayed a late sixteenth-century painting of Sebast-ian’s martyrdom attributed to Baltasar de Echave Orio (figure 7).34

The third-century St. Ursula, according to legend, died by similar means.With a retinue of eleven thousand virgins, she made a pilgrimage to Rome,only to be besieged by Huns on the return trip. She and her companionswere shot through with arrows.35 The parallels that existed between the sto-ries of Teresa and Ursula —both of them virgin-martyrs who suffered arrowwounds— did not go unnoticed in Golden-Age Spain. A 1628 painting byAntonio Bisquert (figure 8), now in the Cathedral of Teruel, shows Ursula,holding an arrow and triumphal banner, standing before a throng of vir-gins.36 One other female has joined their company: Teresa, dressed in theDiscalced Carmelite habit, stands at the right side of the composition withhands folded in prayer. In this painter’s view, at least, Teresa’s reputation formartyrdom earned her a place among Ursula’s retinue.

Such an analogy must have been apparent to artists and viewers in Span-


33. Left for dead by the archers, Sebastian recovered from his wounds and then confrontedthe Emperor, denouncing him for cruelties perpetrated against the Christians. The Emperorordered Sebastian to be beaten to death, and had his lifeless body thrown into a sewer.George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art, London/Oxford/New York, OxfordUniversity Press, 1961, p. 142. During the Middle Ages Sebastian’s cult increased in popularitysince he was regarded as a protector against infectious disease, including the plague. This avo-cation may have resulted from miraculous cures attributed to Sebastian in his legend, or to ametaphorical association of arrows with disease. His popularity in colonial Mexico may havestemmed from his being invoked against diseases that arrived in New Spain with theSpaniards and that, in the sixteenth century, devastated Native American populations.

34. José Guadalupe Victoria, Baltasar de Echave Orio: un pintor en su tiempo, Mexico City,Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1994, pp. 129-133. Toussaint (65) attributes thepainting to Francisco de Zumaya. The work was lost in a fire of 1969 and is now known onlythrough photographs.

35. Ferguson, pp. 145-146. Teresa included Ursula on her list of saints of particular devotion.36. Ernesto Arce Oliva et al., El pintor Antonio Bisquert, 1596-1646, Teruel, Instituto de Estu-

dios Turolenses, 1995, pp. 34-35 and 62-63.

ish America as well, where Ursula was widely venerated and depicted. Thisdevotion increased after 1587, when an urn containing the supposed relics ofher and her martyred companions arrived at the college of Potosí, Bolivia.37

There are numerous colonial paintings attesting to Ursula’s popularity. Acanvas by Hipólito de Rioja (figure 9), in Mexico City’s Pinacoteca Virreinal,shows the members of Ursula’s party in varying states of distress and surren-der, gouged with arrows or being pierced with swords. Ursula kneels in thecenter of the composition, her hands folded in prayer, with an arrowentrenched in her breast. She looks up toward heaven, where the Virgin Maryand a retinue of virgin-martyrs have appeared to receive the dying Ursula and herparty. There also survives a fragment of a canvas depicting this same subject, byLuis Juárez (Mexico City, Museo Nacional de Arte), showing a cluster ofUrsula’s companions.38 Juan Correa painted an opulently-dressed figure ofSt. Ursula standing alone, holding a triumphal standard, with an arrow


Figure 8. Antonio Bisquert, St. Ursulaand the Eleven-Thousand Virgins with St.Teresa, 1628, cathedral of Teruel, Spain.

37. Sebastián, p. 218.38. Ruiz Gomar, pp. 184-186.39. Vargaslugo et al., II, part 2, pp. 361-362.


Figure 9. Hipólito de Rioja, Martyrdom of St. Ursula and Eleven-Thousand Virgins,second half 17th century, Pinacoteca Virreinal, México. Photo: Archivo FotográficoIIE-UNAM.


Figure 10. Juan Correa, Saint Ursula, late 17th early 18th century,Convento de San Francisco, Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala. Photo:Guillermina Vázquez, Archivo Fotográfico IIE-UNAM.


Figure 11. Nicolás Rodríguez Juárez, Transverberation of Saint Teresa,1692, Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán. Photo: Pedro Ángeles,Archivo Fotográfico IIE-UNAM.


Figure 12. Juan Correa, Transverberation of St. Teresa, late 17th early 18th century, MuseoNacional de las Intervenciones, Churubusco. Photo: Cecilia Gutiérrez, Archivo FotográficoIIE-UNAM.

piercing her chest (figure 10; Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala, Convent Church ofSan Francisco).39

These images of saintly death through the medium of arrows, in additionto the aforementioned literary sources, provided Mexican artists and viewerswith a justified means for interpreting Teresa’s Transverberation as amartyrdom. A canvas signed in 1692 by Nicolás Rodríguez Juárez (figure 11;Tepotzotlán, Museo Nacional del Virreinato) shows Teresa kneeling in submissionto the wounding.40 One angel prevents her from falling backward, while the sec-ond holds an arrow, the fiery tip of which is already embedded in the saint’s heart.Teresa looks up toward the Holy Spirit, who hovers in a glory of light at the top ofthe composition. This recurring type of image has clear parallels in the iconogra-phy of St. Ursula, as exemplified by Hipólito de Rioja’s canvas, which shows thesaint kneeling in prayer, gazing up toward the inhabitants of heaven, with anarrow protruding from her breast.

Other prominent Mexican renditions of the Transverberation include a secondversion of the subject by Nicolás Rodríguez Juárez, housed in the Museum of theBasilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The canvas shows a close-up of a half-length figure of Teresa, falling backwards in ecstasy, as an angel, with one arm be-hind the saint’s neck, prepares to drive an arrow into her breast. Teresa’s left handand a fold of her white cape spill out over the edge of a trompe l’oeil frame, a Baro-que device seen in seventeenth-century works such as Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’sself portrait (London, National Gallery).41 In addition to the canvas now in Ávila,mentioned above, Juan Correa painted two other surviving versions of this sub-ject. One, in the Carmelite Church of San Joaquín, Tacuba, places the scene of theTransverberation in front of an altar, as if the experience came upon Teresa whileshe was in the midst of praying before a crucifix.42 A second fragment, now at theMuseo Nacional de las Intervenciones in Churubusco (figure 12), shows Teresa’slimp body suspended by angels as the piercing takes place. Putti throw flowersdown upon the scene, an element often seen in Flemish engravings of the subject.43

Finally, we should consider how this type of Teresian image functioned in its


40. Rogelio Ruiz Gomar, Catalogue 77 in Arte y mística del barroco, p. 276, and Roberto M.Alarcón Cedillo and María del Rosario García de Toxqui, Pintura Novohispana: MuseoNacional del Virreinato, I, México, Asociación de Amigos del Museo Nacional del Virreinato,1992, p. 159.

41. Rogelio Ruiz Gomar, Catalogue 78 in Arte y mística del barroco, p. 278.42. Vargaslugo et al., II, part 2, p. 356.43. The unsigned work is attributed to Correa in Vargaslugo et al., II, part 2, p. 483.

original context. Before they entered museum collections, the majority of portray-als of the Transverberation must have been displayed in Discalced Carmelitechurches attached to communities of nuns or friars. Elisa Vargaslugo has suggestedthat the fragment by Correa at Churubusco, for example, may have once formedpart of the altarpiece of the convent church of Santa Teresa la Antigua in MexicoCity.44 The intended audience for an image such as Correa’s would have been thelaity, gathered for worship, and, in the case of a convent of nuns, the resident reli-gious community, who in many cases could gaze on the altars through iron grillesthat separated their enclosure from the church interior.

Members of the Order, especially the nuns, must have favored this iconogra-phy because it made a pronouncement about their Mother Foundress —presen-ting her as a female counterpart to contemporary martyrs such as Philip of Jesus—and also about their own cloistered lives. Like Teresa, they were not likely to die atthe hands of infidels, though at least one Mexican nun, Madre Inés de la Cruz(1588-1663), one of the foundresses of the convent of Santa Teresa la Antigua,wrote that as a fourteen-year old girl she arrived in Mexico longing for this fate.45

Instead they could pursue a “long martyrdom” —the inner death through loveprescribed by Teresa. Images of her Transverberation are emblematic of thisprocess; they measure out the potentials (and limitations) of female monastic life,presenting a form of martyrdom available to women in a male-dominated society.Paintings of the piercing of Teresa’s heart, then, advertise something of the ethos ofthe Order to the resident religious community and to the public, including girlswho might someday take the Carmelite habit.46 Each image shows Teresa as if inthe midst of a fatal ecstasy, dying, St. Ursula-like, from arrow wounds, and therebyconsummating her paradigmatic pursuit of martyrdom. �


44. The painting is one of five canvases from a now-dispersed altarpiece. See Vargas Lugo etal., II, part 2, pp. 482-488. Supporting Vargaslugo’s hypothesis that the paintings may haveonce formed the high altar of Santa Teresa la Antigua is the fact that Correa is known tohave painted murals for the same community of nuns. See Vargaslugo et al., III, p. 248.

45. Quoted in translation in Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau, Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nunsin Their Own Works, translations by Amanda Powell, Albuquerque, University of New Mex-ico, 1989, p. 344. Nuns’ texts contained in this volume demonstrate a phenomenon ofimportance for evaluating Teresa’s popularity, and consequently that of her image, in Span-ish America: colonial nuns viewed Teresa as the ideal model for the female religious.

46. The paradigmatic nature of Teresa’s Transverberation is implicit in an eighteenth-cen-tury painting by an unidentified artist in the Museo Nacional del Virreinato, which showsthe Christ Child piercing a novice’s heart with a nail, in reference to the Transverberationand to Teresa’s experience of mystical marriage, during which Christ presented her with oneof the nails of His Crucifixion. See Roberto M. Alarcón Cedillo and María del Rosario Gar-cía de Toxqui, Pintura Novohispana: Museo Nacional del Virreinato, vol. III, México, Aso-ciación de Amigos del Museo Nacional del Virreinato, 1994, p. 190.

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